Top Examples of Poor Customer Service and Proven Ways to Improve

Not Taking Responsibility

One of the most common bad customer service stories involve companies not taking responsibility. Either that, or their CS representative doesn’t take any responsibility for anything and they just push people around from one department to the other. Having a bad service experience is enough, if you also have CS representatives not helping you, that makes things even worse. That’s why you want to encourage your team to offer solutions fast, with great incentives for the best performers.

Outdated Policies

People want their issues to be solved quickly and without waiting a lot of time. But in some cases, poor customer services come from outdated policies. That means companies will not update their policies and it makes it harder for support professionals to help. Instead, they are forced to go through policies that are very bad and old. Changing and updating policies often can help quite a bit, and it will save a huge amount of effort.

Long Response Time

Here you can focus on automating and adding chatbots, that way customers will have some type of solution and immediate communication. In case the chatbot won’t help, the customer can be linked to a representative. A lot of examples of bad customer service rely around the idea of long response times. Automation can help with that, and it will free up time for CS experts to actually help those challenging, more complex inquiries.

No Metrics/Ways to Assess Customer Support Results

If CS professionals are not assessed via metrics, not all of them might do their job accordingly. Finding ways to track the replies, response times and other metrics like customer effort or customer satisfaction will always help quite a bit. As always, you want to focus on bringing the best experience to customers, and incentivizing support professionals to deliver an even better result is what you want to pursue.

Ignoring Feedback from Customers

Yes, customers will sometimes offer feedback to highlight their experience and maybe even offer some ideas on how to improve. Sure, not all feedback will be helpful, but it’s a good idea to always appreciate customers for their input. And yes, it comes in handy to study what they shared and maybe even implement it. Customers can end up offering you a lot of valuable info, so listening to them and their input will always come in handy, just take that into consideration.

No Empathy

Another one of the bad customer service examples is when CS representatives have no empathy. From the customer’s perspective, that pretty much shows you don’t care about them or their situation. And it can be very difficult to retain that customer, when clearly they feel like they are talking to a wall or a bot.

How can you tackle this issue? The best approach is to always keep a professional attitude. Listen to what the customer has to say and understand what they need to do. Stay reasonable and focus on helping the person as much as you can. Because the more you do that, the better it will be in the end. Using de-escalation techniques will also help, and it will make it easier to eliminate a lot of potential challenges or issues that could arise.

No Real-Time Support

That’s frustrating because everyone wants their issue to be solved fast. Having at least 1-2 representatives to offer support alongside chatbots will help with that. And it’s not a very large investment. However, it shows your professionalism and respect towards clients. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing, to showcase that you are there to help and not just push the customer around from one office to the next.

Getting in Touch with Your Customer Support Team is Very Difficult

A lot of companies just try to use chatbots and not hire any person for real time support. Instead, they just reply to emails during office days. Granted, it will save resources on the company’s side. But if you check from the customer’s perspective, it’s just very unprofessional to wait for multiple days for a fix that could arrive in just a few minutes or hours at most.

A Lack of Personalization

Modern customers are educated, they expect personalization and a variety of solutions that fit their needs. That’s why it’s imperative to personalize your approach. Clients can easily see past your copy/paste replies. And obviously, they expect a personalized solution that fits their specific requirements. In the end, it’s just a great idea to fully personalize everything and provide clients with an excellent experience. If they see copy/paste replies, obviously that’s not going to be very appealing to them.

Being Transferred Between Departments

Ideally, you want to avoid having more than one department transfer. When people go from one department to the other, it just feels they get pushed around without a solution. And if you place yourself in that person’s shoes, it’s very frustrating. It can lead to bad reviews, not to mention that you could even lose that client. That’s why you must take all these things very seriously. Changing and altering the company policies can be extremely helpful, and it can give you amazing results. Plus, if you avoid changing departments and pushing clients from one spot to the next, that speaks to your professionalism!

No Resolution

Even if people end up waiting a lot of time for a reply, they expect a resolution. If there’s no resolution, that just adds to the frustration of that client. You can see many bad customer service video experiences online. Those things will have a very negative impact on your business. You need to do everything in your power to avoid that, as it will not reflect well on your business. One or two bad experiences are normal, every business will have that. But once people see a pattern, it will start affecting your sales and growth.

Not Caring About the Context

Some CS professionals will offer the same solution to clients, regardless of the context. Obviously, depending on the situation at hand, the solution you need to provide will be different. But realistically, some companies just want to get rid of those CS inquiries and move on to the next clients. However, you want to avoid that. Showing off your professionalism is the right approach, and that’s how you help your business grow.

Conclusion

We encourage you to learn from these bad customer service examples and find ways to improve how you react in front of your clients. The more you learn, the easier it will be to implement professional solutions that highlight your expertise. We highly recommend offering personalized, high quality solutions to all customer service inquiries. That way, you avoid situations like poor customer service that will reflect on your business’s income, growth and return clients!